


Sonder

by KingOfFanfiction



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: . . . yeah, Angst, Cliche, M/M, and colours, deep thoughts from my brain, happy ending!, it's about colouring books, kind of, ziall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-03-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 16:08:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3616119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingOfFanfiction/pseuds/KingOfFanfiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn prefers to sit back and watch people.</p><p>Niall likes to leave things behind, especially colouring books.</p><p>Together, they meet at a park and discuss thoughts of reality and imagination in the rain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sonder

**Author's Note:**

> Posting this is really fucking hard because of the recent news, but I'm not going to write him in anymore unless I get a Ziall prompt. I'm pissed now; I used to respect his decision. I'm just really angry at "Zaughty" right now.
> 
> Ziall for all of you lovely shippers.
> 
> Character Count: 4k

Sometimes, Zayn will sit in congregated areas where he can see every pinpoint of a person. The shade of their hair, the colour of their eyes, the ambition or lack of in their motives, the shape of their nose, their wide smiles, their broken frowns, every flaw or perfection, everything.

Zayn doesn't like the term 'people watching.' He doesn't sit there to judge others by their appearance or barely coherent sentences. He just sits there and  _watches._

 _Watches_  for something he doesn't know.

He considers that maybe, just maybe, he enjoys seeing the thousands and thousands of people walking across the same dirty floor, or seeing two complete strangers smile at each other who will later on smile at another stranger. Perhaps, it's almost unfathomable to Zayn at how many people are there.

Zayn considers that the people in the room make him feel less important, less needed.

It doesn't worry him that he thinks this; it doesn't hollow his being and replace flesh and organs with empty dejection. Instead, it satisfies him. Almost like he's watching all the people, people who have flaws, worries, friends wrapped around them, a dead parent maybe, a lost sibling, a  _dream_ , all surround him and overflow his senses with reality.

It's like watching infinity ignore its existence. Chance walking past a happening. Fate being predicted.

Zayn doesn't know when this habit started, but it's almost like being gorged with the fact that everyone is  _everyone_.

Sure, there's the single detail that humans are utterly diverse, but humans are also the same. The same fears, the same ability to love, the same laughter, the same smile, the same tears. Of course, they're all represented on different levels of meaning or truth.

It makes Zayn feel complete.

__ _

Everyone dies.

Zayn thinks this when the elderly couple passes him as he sits in the park.

It's Spring, and children and couples are welcoming the weather and allergies.

The elderly couple are clinging to each other, withered skin and knobby fingers attached to one another. The man's knuckles threatening to push through the thin layer of skin.

The woman's hair is the quality of straw, the man's a bucket of ashes on his head. The woman is smiling and waving at the children, her breath airy and faltering. The old man holds her hand carefully in his, both hands fragile and wrinkled. He watches her like a petal of hope drifting away in the Spring breeze.

The love between the two fizzes and bubbles in Zayn's chest.

The old man goes out of his way to pick a cherry blossom down from a drooping branch to place in her hair, and the tight bubbles in Zayn's chest burst.

Old and youth collide in her snowy hair. Youthful blotches of pink and red blossom into her white hair. Death and Life are placed right on top of her ear. It seems powerful to Zayn when she waddles along with her husband, who has a weeping smile on his face.

The bark of the tree is handsome and strung tight, much like the strong husband, and the petals of the blossoms dot the air as they sprinkle to the park floor, much like the withering away wife.

__ _

As cliche as it is, Zayn decides to visit a small coffee shop to  _watch_ again.

There's a girl with soft, pink-glazed hair, and she's leaning back in her chair, head up to the ceiling and headphones on. There's a group of college students quietly hissing to each other over their coffees about a project. A woman ruffles her sun-dried hair; she's wearing, too many layers for the sweltering weather.

Zayn looks back to his coffee and sighs.

His internal monologue is jaded analogue, nothing but tiresome droning. It's scratched and slowly drifting along the smooth ambiance in the coffee shop.

His legs dangle from his spot facing the window. His chair is pressed against the wall, so he can watch the pedestrians outside, and the occupants of the coffee shop.

It's almost unhealthy, Zayn thinks, how much interest he has in others lives, but he quickly shrugs it off and imagines what the they're thinking. Zayn wonders if the pink-haired girl is on the verge of trepidation about something by the way she's gnawing on her lip and twirling her fingers in her clenched fist. He wonders if one person in the group of students is suffering from internal diatribe. He wonders if the dried out woman has ever been saturated with the cool tingle of hope.

Zayn grips the cardboard sleeve around his coffee cup harder and soaks in the warmth of the afternoon sun.

He finds it odd that he's drinking coffee in the afternoon, but he figures -  _knows_  - that everyone has their own routine, their own traditions and what-nots.

__ _

There's a person sitting across from Zayn the next day when he visits the park.

He's got blond, windswept hair that's in tangles, glasses perched on his nose - he keeps pushing them up with his middle finger, a colouring book on the picnic table, white shirt billowing in the wind, eyes hard and focused, but his smile is soft every time he picks up another crayon.

This person is contradicting, different labels and stereotypes clashing against each other.

Zayn watches as he colours in the colouring book, a drawing of a little boy holding a balloon which he scribbled in red. The rest of the picture is the same scrabbly, tan texture of the colouring page.

Zayn figures he's trying to colour the picture with a deep, sanctimonious meaning behind the waxy, red balloon and sad, nude-coloured boy. Zayn honestly doesn't care.

All Zayn cares about is watching the other scenarios of the people around him. But, every time he switches his eyes over to the little girl pulling out weeds from the dirt or the teenage couple making crowns out of grass stems and blades, or the lonesome man with his head hung low, he sees a prominent spot of red in his vision, and it distracts him.

Zayn sees the monochromatic tan in all of the personalities and life stories bundled in flesh around him, and the little red balloon that's popping off the page of the colouring book like a beacon of attention.

He frowns and stuffs his hands onto his lap, no longer caring for the girl flinging worms at the teenage couple.

He watches the boy tug a blue crayon out of the pack. His dulcet smile reappears and shines down on the page as he shades gently around the form of the red balloon.

A spot of blue gently cascades into his red confined vision.

__ _

All Zayn sees the next day is the grace of red and blue in his eyes.

It slightly agitates him that someone's finally caught his interest. Zayn's never been one to  _love_ ,  _worry_ ,  _care_ , to  _dwell_ on someone; he's always found weakness in that.

Every time he looks at the boys flashing the smile of their terrible youth at the girls across the mall, or the elderly woman who's throwing dollar bills into the wishing fountain, he finds no reason to  _care_  or to  _dwell_  on them.

He only tries to calculate their life, their stories behind their motives and interactions.

Now, he can't help but wish to see that boy again. He can't help the nagging in the back of his mind that's cutting him in half. It's whispering to him to find that colouring book boy with hard eyes again and find out his _true_  story. Not a story he's made up in his head.

His mind is unsatisfied with his complex theory on the boy.

Zayn frowns heavily and tries to focus on the man with dreadlocks and bleached jeans. All he sees is the red of the tunnels in his ears, and the soft blue etched in his jeans. Zayn wants to etch a story from the ebbs of colour he's radiating, but all he sees is the red balloon and blue sky.

__ _

The next day, Zayn finds himself in the same park on the same bench; the annoying build of hope that he'll see the boy again seeping into his skin.

Zayn picks at the dead skin hanging off his hangnail, and he prays to whoever is listening that the same boy will be there again. His eyes are heavy and set dead-on on the rotting table in the park. The wood is a dead brown, splotches of dull greens spreading through the veins of the splintered table, and it sits sadly against the background of the plastic playground.

Zayn's eyes close for a second, and when he opens them again, he imagines the boy sitting there. This time, Zayn can see through the boy, the background of the rotting table and plastic playground is visible through his chest and stomach. The blue of the sky and the slight tinge of grey in the clouds shines in his head and eyes. The carpet of green and clumps of dirt painting into his feet.

He's holding a red balloon in his vitreous hand. He looks like a sheer curtain of a human stapled to the background of the park.

Zayn finds himself smiling back at the boy, but his smile is cut short.

A football breaks through the picture of his head, spreading it like droplets of water, and flies towards Zayn's face. Zayn shields his face with his hands, but the ball still manages to hit him in the forehead. Zayn then catches the ball in his hands and makes a slight groan of pain. Chagrin colouring in the apples of his cheeks in a light blush.

"Mister, are you okay? We didn't mean to hit you with the-"

Zayn just shakes his head and gently hands the girl with a tooth gap the black-and-white ball. He smiles at her softly, and he quickly tells her he's fine. She furrows her eyebrows before running back to her friends, dirt-crusted tutu bouncing around her hips.

Zayn looks around the park in hope that no one witnessed him getting hit dead-on with a football, but he looks over at another picnic table -

\- and  _he's_  sitting there. A soft, yet humorous smile flashing in Zayn's direction.

__ _

The next day Zayn goes out, he's got a bit of make-up on the pulsing red bruise in the middle of his forehead, and a frown on his face.

Strangers seem to patronize and worry about the dust of red on his forehead, and Zayn finally feels like he's the one being read, being pried into with thick-fingered stares.

This time, he's the blank piece of paper, he's the one having a story written about him. A story about his bruise - _maybe he's got an abusive partner or parent_ ,  _maybe he's a klutz_ ,  _maybe it's a scar from a fire_ ,  _maybe he got in a bar_   _fight_ , _maybe he got hit in the head by a dirty girl in a tutu with a soccer ball_ ,  _maybe . . ._

Zayn feels uncomfortable with the sudden role change, but nonetheless continues to stroll down the street. The littered, damp, ruthless street. He wonders how many people with his exact same shoe and size walked where he's walking right now. He wonders how many people with bruises on their foreheads have walked where he was right now.

He  _wonders_  as it begins to sprinkle rain above him.

Zayn shoulders over a strip of a cross-walk and under a long stretch of sidewalk that has plastic tapestries hung over to shield the pedestrians from the rain.

He wonders if the woman in the pencil skirt entering the counseling center is suffering from a dead-beat husband or wife. He wonders if the crying sketch artist drawing a picture of a child had lost one of his own. He wonders if the man running down the street, face red and drenched, is trying to stay in shape or if he's trying to impress someone.

He wonders if  _that boy_  is sitting at another picnic table.

Zayn decides to test his luck, so he walks to the park that's nearly deserted because of the drizzle of rain.

It's ridiculous to Zayn that people don't play in the rain anymore, they just avoid it and make intellectual thoughts about it, sometimes posting the thoughts on a cheap, scenic background with an overused filter.

He quietly steps into the park and looks over at the picnic tables. The ghost of the boy is nowhere to be seen. With a sigh of defeat, he sits at one. Sometimes, he sits and thinks; other times, he just sits.

Zayn just sits this time.

He listens to the rimjhim of the rain, the sound of the crystal drops rolling down tree branches and into petals and grass blades, he tastes the low clouds in the atmosphere that pulse in his mouth, he feels the rain trickle onto his skin, he does and feels everything but  _watch_.

Zayn feels frigid.

The coldness of his stomach is pulling and dispersing into his veins, chilling every fiber of his being. Zayn tries to shake away the feeling of blindness, but it's relentless, and it bites into the supple of his flesh and chews away at his sanity. It feels like he's being eaten alive - he's letting it happen.

Zayn's fingers anxiously tap on the surface of the decaying wood, but he's careful not to get a splinter. He doesn't need the pain of a sliver of wood in his finger right now, not while he's debating his stability.

"That's a gnarly bruise on your forehead."

Zayn jumps and looks up to the voice. He feels like hitting himself for eagerly waiting for  _him_.

Zayn's smile is queasy, and he looks back to the playground in an attempt to show disinterest in the boy. But, he's as relentless as the drizzle of the rain, and sits himself right across from Zayn.

"Why are you always here?"

"I'm not  _always_  here." Zayn dejects and continues to tap his fingers on the spongey wood.

The boy smiles, and he shifts his jacket on. "Every time I've been here, you've been here."

Zayn shrugs his shoulders, "Coincidence?"

The boy leans forward and locks his fingers together, "Maybe, you're stalking me, or maybe, you've been intrigued by me. Maybe, you just like the park, ma-"

"Maybe, I just happen to be sitting at the same location as you."

The boy's shoulders deflate, but his smile stands strong and prominent on his face. "Maybe you're my soul mate."

"I take it that you're a pabitel?"

His smile finally disappears, "A pabitel?"

Zayn finally looks into his hard, blue eyes, and they're much softer and expectant than he originally thought. "Yeah, someone who is fascinated with the joy of life, or their fate. Someone who tries to mold reality to fit their own, someone who is imaginative."

His smile returns, but it's more snarky than the first. "I take it that you're the opposite of that?"

Zayn shrugs his shoulders and blinks away the collection of rain gathered on his eyelashes, "I prefer sonder."

He finally sits up triumphantly, "I know what sonder is! It's where you care, too much about other people's lives, right?"

He's off by a lot, missing important factors of 'sonder,' but Zayn smiles weakly and nods his head. The boy quietly regains his original posture and looks at him. At that moment, Zayn thinks the boy smells like turpentine and the frayed ends of a t-shirt: something more comforting than a burnt wick, but something more displeasing than failure.

"Why are you in the rain?"

"Why are  _you_ in the rain?"

The boy quirks an eyebrow, "I asked you first."

"Maybe, you were right, maybe, I am stalking you."

The boy laughs. It's a laugh that bursts in the air, but it's also timid. His laugh is as different as Indie and Rock, but it fits together like the wings to a butterfly. It's hearty and bold.

This boy scares Zayn at how different yet composed he is.

"I'm Zayn."

"I'm Niall."

Niall seems to glow even brighter, the apples of his cheeks growing and his skin glistening. Niall's the like of a child stuffed into an adult's body. He's flamboyant and kind, he's obnoxious and loud; he's the bold colour of red on a white background. But he's also conserved and quiet, he's soft and gentle; he's the muted colour of blue on a white background.

Niall is everything in one.

It makes Zayn cringe.

Niall flips the length of his hair and looks back at Zayn. He seems to study him for a few minutes before smiling gracefully. "You remind me of a Tumblr girl."

"Wow, thank you, Niall."

Niall smiles, "Anytime, Zayn. Anytime."

Niall's the kind of person to ignore the fact that the days of his life are the same. They aren't some grand symphony of dramatic crescendos, smooth arpeggios, and bold belts. Life is the symphony sang in muted voices of yesterday's. Life is the tune that gets stuck in your head, and the verse carries on in a jagged performance. And, soon, the tune of the verse will be forgotten; you can't find the exact rhythm anymore.

Life is a symphony composed of broken souls and highs, a melody of shredded veins and sweet lips.

Zayn looks up at Niall, and his pupils are glittering, bottomless, and opaque. An ocular eclipse, that's all Zayn sees. And, it's like looking through the peephole of a door, seeing every detail of the scenery in front of you, but Zayn doesn't know whether he's inside the house or outside.

"You keep on looking at me like I've got something on my face."

"You're just . . .  _interesting_ , that's all."

Niall smiles proudly. "I'm a very interesting person."

Zayn nods his head, and Niall points at the tattoos on Zayn's arms, "Speaking of interesting, what inspired those?"

The ink races up his arms in intricate patterns, laces of colour or bold blacks sprawled on his skin. Zayn puts words and symbols on his skin, and Niall puts words in his mouth.

"I didn't really have any inspiration." Zayn quietly states as he traces the henna on his hand.

"Are you sure? Any people, books, quotes, TV shows?"

Zayn picks his head up and smiles, "I watched  _The_   _Power Rangers_  a lot when I was younger." **  
**

"That's cool! I liked  _The Power Puff Girls_. Buttercup reminds me of you."

Zayn can't help it, but he lets out a loud burst of laughter that shoots through the rain-drenched atmosphere of the park. His vocal cords are strung tight from the laughter, and it's almost painful. He doesn't know when he last laughed.

"I like your laugh; you should laugh more often."

Zayn quickly flushes and shuts his mouth. His breathing slows, and he looks at Niall with pursed lips. Niall mimics his look with determination in his eyes. It seems unoriginal to Zayn, the pulpy, fabricated look he holds in the deep colour of blue hues.

"I feel like you're the kind of person who doesn't take their shoes off when they enter a house."

Zayn curtly laughs and flashes a challenging smile, "And, what makes you say that?"

"Because, you take your shoes off in a home to indicate you're staying for a while, and you seem like the person that just . . .  _drifts_ into people's lives and then, you leave."

Zayn nods his head, a tinge of amazement left unsaid on his lips. He looks back over to the park, and then back to Niall. "Where's your colouring book?"

"Ah, I left it in a bookstore."

Zayn flinches, "Why?"

"Because, I want someone to pick up my colouring book, and just flip through the pages. I find it cool- no,  _amazing_  that I coloured that picture two days ago, but maybe a year from now, someone will pick up that same book. They'll see the moments and times of two days ago left the same way they were in a year. I'm an artist leaving a colouring book behind; an architect leaving a room abandoned."

"That's the deepest thing you've said to me. I'm impressed."

Niall shakes his damp hair, hands running through the blond locks, and he looks up and smiles and Zayn. "I try, sometimes."

Zayn feels the urge to smile back, and, much to his own displeasure, he smiles back.

"You know, it probably wasn't a smart idea to talk to me. What if I  _was_ a stalker, or a murderer?"

Niall's smile grows wider, his cheeks tear from their limits, and his eyes crinkle. "I'm glad you aren't either of those."

"Thanks?"

Before Niall can respond, thunder shatters in the heavy fog of clouds above them. Zayn's the first to flinch, and Niall squeaks. Both look to each other embarrassed of their shocked outburst, but both unintentionally find comfort in the fact that they're both shocked.

Zayn reaches his hand out after he stands, and his lopsided smile shows a sprinkle of worry. "I hope you haven't taken a shower today. It's about to pour down on us."

As if Zayn controls the weather with his words, the thunder roars above them, and spikes of rain pummel down. It's like a torrent of humid stabs, and Niall's pretty sure they're both drenched now. A blinding liquid fog shades Niall's vision in an instant.

"Shite!" Zayn hisses when he almost slips on the drenched sidewalk, and Niall's laugh filters through the beads of rain.

"Be careful, we don't need any more liquid on the streets!"

Zayn's frown grows impossibly heavier, and Niall gives him a pathetic smile.

"I'm wet."

"That's dir-"

"Shut up, Niall."

Niall smiles softly, arms crossed in a pliant manner. Zayn would've found the smile comforting, but rain happened to be soaking his underwear. And it clings to him like a second skin; it makes Zayn squirm in discomfort.

"Hey, stop frowning. At least it's not cold rain."

"It's still rain."

" _Warm_  rain."

Zayn shrugs his shoulders, "Either way, why are we still standing out here?"

Niall pauses, and his face stills. His eyes glisten in the rain, but they slowly fade into a dull blue. His eyes are like lightbulbs trying to obtain their full beam, their full potential. Every nanosecond that passes is filled with building tension that cracks into slivers of voltage that tugs into their translucent, crystalline stomachs.

Niall's eyes falter once more before he smiles at Zayn, "Because, if we leave, we won't be talking anymore."

"How do you know that?"

Niall shrugs. A look of content sadness coursing into his glistening skin. "I don't."

Zayn doesn't know what to say, so he stands there on the edge of the sidewalk. The rain sounds like rapid waterfalls in his ears, and it almost distracts him from how wet he is.

"You like fate, though."

Niall looks over at him with a question blipping in his eyes. Zayn continues to talk.

"So, if we do part ways, and we meet again, that must mean we're supposed to talk, right?"

Niall's smile is almost proud this time. It's so sweet, it makes Zayn sad.

"Look at you, sonder-boy."

"Shut up." Zayn frowns and crosses his arms.

Niall laughs at this. And it falls silent again.

Zayn looks over at Niall with imploring eyes, and Niall looks far off to the movie theatre sign blinking its electric lights in a flashy manner. He's pulled himself under a store overbearing to shield half of his body from the rain.

"We should kiss, right?"

Niall steps back a bit, face flushed, and startled laugh a bit, too quick. "No! We just met; that's creepy!"

"Sorry, " Zayn says, looking over at Niall, "I thought we were going to do that movie kind of ending."

Niall's laugh isn't forced; it's heavy and boisterous. "Zayn, the people in the movies usually know each other for like a month before making out in the rain."

Zayn finally moves from his spot under the ledge and over to in front of Niall. His smile is lighter, and his eyes softer.

"Well, pabitel-boy, if we see each other again tomorrow, or a week from now, consider us soul mates."

And then Zayn walks off in the direction of the flashing sign. His hands stuffed into his pockets, and his head held down due to the rain. His whole body is highlighted in the watery colours of blue and red flashing from the sign.

Maybe, for once, Zayn decided to stop worrying about other's stories, and write his own about rain-drenched first meetings, thoughtful words, and the shade of red and blue.

Zayn's  _own personal_  story of Niall.


End file.
